Analysis of Capacitor Voltage Imbalance in Hybrid Converters and Inherently Balanced Operation Using Symmetric Architecture

This letter investigates the origin of the flying capacitor voltage imbalance in hybrid converters. An intuitive voltage–charge relationship is established to give a general explanation of the flying capacitor voltage balance in hybrid converters. The relationship is applied to devise a relatively simple and intuitive method to identify the behavior and performance difference of capacitor voltage and inductor current balancing performance in hybrid converters for
$V_{\text{out}}< \frac{V_{\text{in}}}{N}$
cases. Conventional hybrid converters with an even number of inductor charging intervals are shown to be susceptible to flying capacitor voltage imbalance, while flying capacitors in hybrid converters with inductors having odd charging intervals have inherently balanced operations. As a direct result of the analysis, a new symmetric architecture and the operation of three-level buck converters are introduced to achieve an inherent balance of flying capacitor voltages, which can be applied to other flying capacitor multilevel converters. Hardware prototypes are implemented and measured for the verification of the analytical analysis and the new symmetric operation